Opening Sunday, September 23rd, from 3PM - 5PM

On view through Sunday, November 11th

Hyde Park Art Center is proud to announce the artists selected for inclusion in the 2012 Ground Floor exhibition. The exhibition, which opened August 19, introduces Chicago to new talent to watch, spotlighting the most promising artists who have recently emerged from Chicago’s top level MFA programs.

A survey exhibition of fresh art that brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent, Ground Floor acts as a biennial best-of show that challenges and transforms Chicago’s existing artscape. Ground Floor, so named because it fills the entire lower level of the Art Center—over 6,000 square feet of gallery space—gives young artists a major public venue in one of Chicago’s premiere exhibition spaces, delivers a diverse audience via one of the most trusted authorities on great art in the city, and provides a crucial springboard into the professional art world following completion of the MFA. At the same time, Ground Floor offers the arts community a consistent yet dynamic destination where they are introduced to artists whose work demands to be seen and supported.

Ground Floor is the brainchild of art world luminary Dawoud Bey, who together with Sze Lin Pang, Jason Salavon, and other members of the Art Center’s Exhibitions Committee selects Ground Floor artists based on recommendations by local faculty, artists, and curators. Exhibiting artists in the 2012 Ground Floor exhibition hail from a broad range of schools that offer graduate level fine art degrees, including the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.